Glebe House is a very fine property with many periods of historic building. The owners were carrying out a complete refurbishment, and we were employed by the contractor to attend to the beautiful and unusual plasterwork on the ceilings and cornices. We had to remove the many layers of paint which had been built up over the years. Some repairs were also necessary.
Works in Progress
Ceiling Repair
Part of the house dates from the Tudor period and possesses fine decorative plasterwork which shows signs of renovation over the years. This ceiling had suffered damage and some structural work was necessary before the plasterwork could be repaired.
The ceiling was badly cracked, and the timbers above needed to be repaired.
Easy does it! Sometimes it is necessary to remove damaged plasterwork sections before repairing them.
The ceiling had to be propped before the repairs could be carried out from the floor above. This is a specialist job and we put the propping in place for the contractor.
Dental tools can be used to pick out the paint from the fine details of the original plaster work.
Once decorated the repairs are all but invisible.
Ceiling repairs complete before painting. The repair is barely visible.
Overmantle
The detail of this unusual overmantle was obscured by layers of paint. Stripping paint in this context is a specialist procedure and we used special heritage-approved tools after consulting experts in the field.
The overmantel before work began with much of the fine detail obscured by layers of historic paint.
The paint has been completely stripped and the overmantel is ready to be carefully painted. The fine details have been revealed.
Interesting details emerged. The left-hand head had been replaced at some point without any regard to what had been there before. See the right-hand head above which is original!
Cornices
These decorative cornices are in the Georgian part of the house. Again, layers of paint needed to be removed so that the detail was evident again.
A specialist steam stripper was used to strip the outer layers of paint.
Fine hand tools were used to remove the final fragments of paint from between the deep plaster mouldings.
The fine detail of the plaster cornice emerges – beautiful ivy leaves can now be seen which have been obscured by paint for decades. Note the missing plaster medallion – if these came away while stripping the paint we conserved them and they were re-attached.